Archive for the ‘Dodge Charger III’ tag

As we’ve seen previously, Andy, a.k.a. “HarborIndiana,” has a thing for photochopping Packards that might have been, and his most recent three are some of the most compelling yet.

Two of them go along with what appears to be Andy’s master plan for saving Packard, circa the mid-1950s. Calling on the hexagon’s heritage, Andy resurrected the Twin Six name for a couple of V-12 concepts, including the sport coupe above and sport sedan below. More than just a lengthened hood, the two feature a nice mix of Packard styling elements from that era, including Patrician trim and Caribbean wheel wells. The judicious chop-n-channel on the coupe doesn’t hurt either.

While the sport sedan could easily stack up against, say, the Lincoln Capri or Cadillac Series 62, the sport coupe would inhabit a gray area between the Chrysler 300 and Ford Thunderbird that wouldn’t fill in until we started to see the likes of the Buick Riviera and other luxury sport coupes nearly a decade later. Odd that Andy hasn’t yet turned the sport sedan into a town car.

The third of Andy’s recent ‘chops, however, takes a totally different tack:

Maybe instead of going gloriously big, as with the Twin Six revivals above, Packard should have severely downsized with a Twin Two city car, mimicking the BMW Isetta and other microcars. Presumably Andy meant for the Twin Two to be powered by a V-4 engine in the rear, and the front would have hinged up something like the Isetta. Probably would have gone over like a lead balloon, but if Packard was doomed anyway, then why not?

We’re guessing Andy noted the comments on the extreme cab-forward photochopping post questioning where one would put doors and an engine on those concepts and decided to answer them in his own inimitable way. And then proceeded to apply the same line of reasoning to the 1968 Dodge Charger III concept car, the Cadillac Cimarron (or, as he calls it, the Cim-moron), and the Pontiac Aztek. Actually, he made the Aztek look much better by turning it into a city car…

* Low, sleek, chock full of advanced technology: the Dodge Charger III could have easily served as a prop for a futuristic sci-fi TV show or movie, but instead debuted as an idea car at the Chicago Motor Show in 1968. CarDesignNews has more on it and its post-show circuit fate.

* As Ronan Glon at Ran When Parked informed us this week, “basket” apparently means “sneaker” in French. Why do we care? Because of the limited edition Citroën 2CV Basket of the Seventies, a tin snail painted to look like a sneaker.